258 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



want of management in such a season, your boy, 

 having nothing to do, would certainly be off, spend- 

 ing his pence on gunpowder, and joining a group of 

 rascals about the hedges, idly shooting at birds 

 swearing either at a hit or miss and contracting an 

 intolerable itch for a life of poaching, and hence of 

 drams, to be had by the easy won price of a pheasant, 

 or, failing that, by other acts of theft. Keep your 

 boy from such associates, as you have to answer for 

 his soul. Let the snow be no hinderance to his work. 

 Desire him to cut for you a road to the trench, as 

 you may wish to walk that way; and it will serve to 

 keep his own feet dry and make his work look com- 

 fortable. The removal of the feathery load from 

 road and trench is not the labour of an hour; and 

 when you look at the red earth rising above the snow, 

 and visited by the robin at the clear sky, and high- 

 ways unfit for riding or walking at the dry and broken 

 subsoil thirsting for the riddle it is scarcely possible, 

 in the bracing air, to resist the temptation of pick or 

 shovel, one of which is sure to be at leisure ; and 

 surely worse might be done than to spend in such a 

 way one or more such hours. 



There is a peculiarity of the boy's age which 

 ought not to be overlooked. He approaches man- 

 hood, and is ambitious of the various working imple- 

 ments that are proper to a man the hedgebill, the 

 scythe, the saw, or the joiner's plane; and as he thus 

 has the willingness, certain it is, if you have the tools 

 and can show their use, he will on a few trials do 

 tolerably well with them all; with the sythe, not for 

 a hay crop, but a handful of grass; or in hard weather, 

 if restricted to the upward cut, he may prune a hedge; 



